At 2,660 miles long and with over 400,000 total feet of elevation change, the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada, is not for the weak-legged. Chris Alexander's Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs allows less hard-core hikers to traverse the famous path – vicariously, at least. Alexander, who hiked and photographed the entire trail over five months in 2012, not only captures iconic vistas in places like Oregon's Three Sisters Wilderness, he lingers over the small stuff: ice crystals in California's Kings Canyon National Park, green shoots of mullein sprouting among volcanic rocks. Through Alexander's lens, the trail itself is at once a remarkable feat of engineering and a landscape feature as natural and spectacular as Crater Lake. This is a book that will quicken the pulse of veteran hikers – and inspire even the most couch-bound potato to grab a backpack.